How it works...

The parse module allows us to define a format, such as string, that reverses the format method when parsing values. A lot of the concepts that we discussed when creating strings applies here—put values in brackets, define the type after a colon, and so on.

By default, as seen in step 4, the values are parsed as strings. This is a good starting point when analyzing text. The values can be parsed into more useful native types, as shown in steps 5 and 6 in the How to do it... section. Please note that while most of the parsing types are the same as the ones in the Python Format Specification mini-language, there are some others available, such as ti for timestamps in ISO format. 

If native types are not enough, our own parsing can be defined, as demonstrated in step 7 in the How to do it... section. Note that the definition of the price function gets a string and returns the proper format, in this case a Decimal type.